A Different Street

On American Routes this afternoon, Nick Spitzer played a version of Joni Mitchell’s Urge for Going that I’d never heard before, by Tom Rush. It was spare and beautiful, honoring the song’s superb bones and letting the words of regret and loss speak for themselves rather than mawking them up.

It hit me in a particularly vulnerable place. Middle age seems to be the age of regrets, at least so far: it’s clear for most of us that we’re not going to be contenders, and in fact some of us — I — fear that we’re never going to get within shouting distance of whatever it is that we’re supposed to do in this life. I know I ought to be either making peace with that or doing something to change it, but instead I linger here in the stick’s cleft, feeling miserably stuck and miserably incapable of moving.

I recently completed another turn around the sun, and the occasion was much more melancholy than previous years. I didn’t feel that there was much to celebrate, either in the last year or the last forty-some; I could list all the things I’ve tried that haven’t worked out, but that would bore you and further depress me, so I won’t. When I get to this point, I too have the urge for going, but the sad thing is I can’t even imagine where I would go, or what I would do if I got there.

Via Twitter:

nprscottsimon Just met Roxana Saberi. Her interview w/ Melissa Block on ATC Th night. She thanked all of you for yr concern & thinks it made a difference

nprscottsimon PS to meeting Roxana. At one pt she borrowed my handkerchief to dab some expressions of emotion. Told her to keep it–the least I could do.

Handsome, smart, funny, sensitive, AND carries a handkerchief?  Swoon!

Women of Hispanic descent = LatinAs, not LatinOs.

… so here’s a Basset hound to keep you company. See you Monday!

To the middle school today to meet the new principal (the third in two years). In his talk, he gave a short bio, spending most of that time describing his career path.

This led me to cogitate on why it is that when successful people describe their job history, it almost always sounds like Tarzan looks swinging through the jungle: the next vine is always there when he needs it, and takes him exactly where he wants to go. By contrast, my own career path (such as it is) is choked with misses, dead ends, cliffs, and brick walls. I’d love to believe that I could craft a new opportunity out of all of that, but frankly I’m not seeing it.

I have heard many people describe their path to or with God as a journey that looks completely random and eccentric at the time, but which viewed in retrospect seems inevitable. This gift has not been vouchsafed to me as yet, and in fact I’m feeling as stuck and hopeless on that score as on so many others.

In a blog post about his writing career, Wil Wheaton wrote about learning to recognize his creatively stuck and hopeless places as “labor pains.” I’d love to use this metaphor myself, except that it would involve admitting that I’ve been in labor for … well … several decades. Hurts, too.

Is staying angry about something (say, a hurtful pattern of behavior) over a period of two years the same thing as holding a grudge?

I found this fascinating: visual depictions of the amount of sugar in common foods and drinks, using sugar cubes as illustrations (one cube = 4 grams).

In an ideal world, I would read the nutrition facts labels on all the packaged food I buy. In the real world, I’m sometimes reduced to grabbing, and I’m sure my decisions are affected to some extent by the marketing buzzwords on the packaging.

Cheap Healthy Good has a well-sourced list of the meanings of commonly used food packaging words. For example, do you know the difference between LOW-FAT, LITE and REDUCED-FAT? Neither did I. And unless you shop only at health food stores, you might need to know the following:

WHOLE WHEAT
What it means: There is some amount of whole wheat in the food you are buying.
What it really means: A range of things, many of which can’t be derived from reading the words WHOLE WHEAT splashed across a logo. To ensure you’re buying a healthy product, look for something with 100% Whole Wheat, and make sure whole wheat flour is the first ingredient, and no other flours are present.

(I would add that this also applies to products labeled “Whole Grain.” Sigh!)

A: Everyone is getting just a LITTLE cranky.

This morning, a mom came to shoo me away from the front of the car line, where my daughter was, admittedly, taking her time pulling her stuff together. She did that fake-sweetly-passive-aggressive thing where she asked, “Can I *help* you get anything out of the car?” When I asked politely why she was asking, she said, “I usually park there.” (!) “We need to keep the car line moving.” Blood pressure reaching critical levels in 3…2…1…

The only thing that saved the morning was my son calmly pointing out later that her two statements were mutually exclusive.

It’s not — but these are quite funny. Via a tweet from WaitWait. The number of parens in this self-referential expression is left as an exercise for the reader.